The present invention relates to semiconductor inspection systems and/or processing, and more particularly to chambers for processing or inspecting substrates such as semiconductor wafers, reticles, and the like for the manufacture of integrated circuits (ICs). Integrated circuits are manufactured by building semiconductor devices on one or more substrates in a process chamber. The semiconductor devices are interconnected to form the IC. A semiconductor wafer may have one, or many, or a few ICs.
Semiconductor devices are fabricated on substrates such as silicon wafers by processes that involve depositing, patterning, and removing of materials on the substrates. Deposition processes such as chemical vapor deposition (CVD) or physical vapor deposition (PVD) may be used to deposit a layer of material on a substrate. Photolithography techniques may be used to create a pattern on a layer of material to control where etching, depositing, or implanting will occur. Etch processes may be used to remove portions of a deposited layer, so that other materials may be deposited in the removed portions. Ion implantation processes may be used to change the properties of a deposited layer of material by physically bombarding and implanting dopants into the deposited layer. By using various ones of these process steps, semiconductor devices, and, thus, integrated circuits are created on the substrate.
In fabricating ICs, specialized process chambers are used sequentially to perform the steps required to build the semiconductor devices and the ICs. Each chamber usually has an internal chamber in which predefined conditions, such as a certain vacuum level, are maintained during the process. For a complex integrated circuit, hundreds of individual process steps may be involved in building and interconnecting all of the underlying semiconductor devices. To streamline the manufacturing process, process chambers may be integrated into a cluster tool, so that the different process steps may be executed sequentially and efficiently, using less factory space than stand-alone chambers, and requiring less distance to transport wafers from process step to process step. A cluster tool provides process sequence integration by “clustering” several different process chambers into one platform.
In some inspection tools and process chambers a substrate is moved along various directions during the inspection/ or manufacturing process respectively. The inspection tool/process chamber has an internal chamber in which various predefined conditions (such as a certain vacuum level) are maintained. When some processing chambers are integrated into a cluster tool the substrate may be shifted from one process chamber to another without the need to break pressure seals in the process environment. As a result, there may be fewer opportunities for unwanted contamination to occur. In addition, it is possible to save some or all of the time involved in completely venting up an internal chamber, moving a substrate from stand-alone chamber to stand-alone chamber, and then pumping down each succeeding internal chamber to achieve the necessary level of vacuum to conduct the next process sequence.
Because of the complexity of the manufacturing process, there is frequent inspection of substrates to ensure that the process steps are executed properly and that the substrates are reasonably free of defects, preferably as free of defects as is practicable. Currently, processing and inspection of semiconductor substrates are done separately, in stand-alone tool.
Accordingly, there is a need to provide an efficient method and system for allowing to integrate an inspection tool into a cluster tool. An inspection chamber that can be integrated into a cluster tool would further streamline the manufacturing process for integrated circuits.
There is a further need to provide a chamber with an internal chamber that may be pumped rapidly. There is yet a further need to allow efficient and relatively contamination free system and method for moving a substrate while maintaining predefined conditions within an internal chamber in which the substrate is placed.